1. Field of the Invention
This present invention is a bale saw for cutting hay or straw bales, and more particularly, for cutting large, round hay bales The hay bales are cut for feeding to animals.
2. Background of the Invention
The baling of hay for animal food has changed from the compaction of smaller, rectangular bales to the rolling of large, round cylinders. There are many advantages inherent in this technique. The bales are wound in a circular fashion so that they, in effect, provide their own thatched surface for deflecting precipitation. This allows storage of the round bales in fields, rather than requiring barn loft storage.
The round bales are large and difficult to handle, however. A typical bale may weigh 1,200 pounds. Obviously, the bales cannot be individually picked up and thrown into grinders as could the smaller, rectangular bales. When the large bales are to be cut up for animal food, mechanical assistance is needed to manipulate the bales and reduce them to edible size.
The use of chain saws for cutting bales in the prior art is illustrated by U.S. Pat. No. 4,903,562 to Wunder et al. The Wunder et al. patent discloses a particular style of cutting link used on hay bales. The use of such chains in grinding apparatus is illustrated by U.S. Pat. No. 3,612,127 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,618,649, both to Benno, which show hoppers with multiple chains for grinding.
While the grinding of bales is known in the art, what is not illustrated in this art is the reduction in size of a large bale so that it can be easily handled and fed to prior art grinders or even fed to animals.
Various apparatus have been disclosed for slicing and manipulating large bales. For example, U.S. Pat. No 4,497,163 to Ogman and U.S. Pat. No. 4,549,481 to Groeneveld et al. illustrate methods of slicing cylindrical bales by unrolling them. In the normal farm operation, this highly specialized apparatus is not always satisfactory. What is needed is a mobile, easily handled bale saw for cutting bales down to smaller sizes so that they can be handled by farmers and standard farm equipment. Then any of the various grinding techniques may be used to reduce the bales to animal feed.
The present invention overcomes the difficulties of the prior art by providing a bale saw for large round hay bales.